Of Monarchs and Men
by Schmo and Sushi
Summary: Four young rulers take a break from palace business and discuss their plans for the future. One-shot, Pevensie sibling fluff. Complete.


_A/N: I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to work on Taming the Tides, but I found this one-shot on my computer today while I was looking for a college essay. I wrote it over the summer for the Narnia Fic Exchange on Livejournal. Enjoy! :)_

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In the fourth year of his reign, High King Peter decided that summers in Finchley no longer compared with those in Narnia. He had never seen mountains so green, fields so yellow, in all his years in that part of London; here in Narnia, the pure exuberance with which the land burst into the new season never ceased to amaze him, or hurt his eyes. Everywhere there was harlequin life, fearless majesty, joy in mere existence—every rock and stick and nymph and faun to the dryads and naiads and underground burrowers seemed to look upon the four months of sultry warmth as their chance to honor the lion, he who had liberated them from the Witch and her dreadful winter. Peter was young yet, and full of dreams and vigor, but he sometimes found himself with the realization that the land and people of Narnia would most likely continue this joyous celebration even after his time under the crown was long over.

But he never allowed himself time to dwell on this morbid, yet strangely stirring, thought. He was sturdily seventeen and had a kingdom to run!

"Peter, are you going to go or not? If not, move aside and give me the rope."

The speaker who said this to him with a rather pesky pinch was Queen Lucy, oft called the Valiant despite her tender age of twelve, who stood beside him with sopping hair and a frock that was growing steadily muddier. "I'll go, just give me a moment, Lu," Peter replied, turning his mind back to the task at hand: shimmy up a rope that had been tied to a tree branch just high enough that his feet would clear the rocky bank, then swing himself out and leap into the pond without landing on Edmund or Susan.

"How long does it take?" Lucy said impatiently. "I shall be dry before you work up your nerve!"

"My nerve!" Peter cried. "I'll tell you I have plenty of nerve."

"Are you sure?" called Edmund, impetuous in all his adolescence. "I'd have thought the muck-suckers would put you off."

"They eat one's feet, you know," giggled Susan.

Ed began to splash and flail his arms wildly, crying, "Oh, no! The muck-suckers are eating my feet! They are dragging me down! Help me, High King Peter, help m—" And he disappeared beneath the surface, much to Lucy's and Susan's entertainment.

Peter was not so amused. _Muck-suckers are salt-water creatures_, he told himself privately, _indigenous only to the Great Sea and similar bodies of water_. So before he lost his willpower, he took a running jump from the bank, felt himself airborne for a moment, then released the rope and went plummeting into the murky pond water.

A fish brushed against his ankle, and when he surfaced, it was to see Ed and Susan grinning down at him as he yelped and shuddered at the coldness of its scales. "Muck-suckers, _really_," said Susan, laughing as he quickly moved away from the spot. "To think you're afraid of them!"

"Not afraid," Peter spluttered, rubbing slimy water from his eyes. "I just don't relish the thought of my feet being eaten, thank you."

With a giant splash, Lucy landed behind them and emerged with a merry whoop. "Oh, this beats duty any day!" she said with vigorous sloshing and throwing lily pads like discuses.

"Oh, don't mention the word 'duty'," Susan groaned. "If I hear that word again, I think I shall scream!"

"Duty," said Edmund roguishly.

Susan shrieked and threw up her hands.

"You are so very mature."

"Says the king who's spent the last hour in a pond," said Lucy.

The boy turned up his nose and threw back his head. "Careful, sister, or I shall insist we return to Cair."

"You wouldn't!"

"I might. Besides—as credulous as you consider our advisors to be, do you really think they believe that we are really visiting with the Badger family? They know we can hardly spend more than ten minutes in their den. We are fitting less and less easily, these days."

"Edmund has a point, you know," Peter broke in. "I think we ought to retire to the bank and dry ourselves in the sun."

"Oh, you're such a killjoy," Lucy harrumphed.

"Nevertheless…"

"'You're the high king,'" she sighed, and reluctantly began to wade towards the bank, Susan in her wake.

"Attalass," said Peter and Edmund in unison.

The two girls spread out their skirts as they laid down on the warm ground, and shook their hair down and let it spill out over the grass to dry; Edmund and Peter removed their tunics and wrung them out before putting them back on and lounging back to bask in the yellow sun. The heat immediately warmed their cold skin and began to dry their clothes.

"I think I should like to have a painting done of this pond one day," said Lucy as she stretched like a cat. "It is so lovely."

"Why don't you commission Crisius the faun?" Susan offered. "His rendering of the _Splendor Hyaline_'s construction was so detailed and precise."

"Good idea."

"I should like him to paint the _Splendor_ once she is finished," said Edmund. "She will be a breathtaking vessel—imagine her with green silk sails, and the swan's head at the prow…" He trailed off into wistful silence.

Peter sighed. It had been Edmund who had authorized the fabrication of such a ship; no kingdom or monarchy was complete without a beautiful (yet functional) ship of state, he had argued as he finalized the plans with the master carpenter. Peter himself had no interest in taking to the seas, but his brother seemed so set on the idea, and their two sisters once they had been persuaded, that to deny them would be to squash a long-lived dream.

"We shall hold feasts upon it," Susan said. "Entertain our guests, and parley with ambassadors!"

"But she will be quick, too," said Lucy, sitting up. "I can just see her, rushing through the waves with us at her prow, giving chase to an enemy warship and winning a glorious battle with Aslan's banner flying at the _Splendor_'s mast."

Edmund laughed, saying, "You get ahead of yourself, sister! Where will this enemy come from? We have secured alliances with Archenland, and the Seven Isles, Lone Islands, Galma, and Terebinthia have all declared allegiance to the crown. I think us very good at statehood, despite our youth."

"What about the Ettins? And the Calormenes?" Lucy challenged.

"Lucy has a point," Peter said. "Aye, the giants concern me—they refuse to parley with us, and they are driving our people south from the border—I fear there shall have to be military intervention one day. Not to mention, the Tisroc of Calormen is hesitant to craft any treaties with us until his son is older."

"How old is he?" said Susan.

"Eighteen, I believe," Peter replied. "Just two years older than you."

Susan wrinkled her nose. "I don't believe that old bag for a minute. I think the Tisroc wishes for me or Lucy to marry the prince!"

Peter shrugged. "That may be. But we've all agreed, no marriages just yet. And when the time does come, we'll have to think long and hard about it—considering Narnia's well-being in the long run, as well as your own."

"I don't mind waiting," Lucy muttered, rolling onto her stomach. "I hate thinking so far in the future! I wish to take out those Ettins right away, add to Cair, build a stronger wall around it, and have more parties. Why must we always discuss marriage and alliances and new bridges and improved school systems and stronger border defense?"

"We won't live forever, you know," Edmund replied mildly. "And I, for one, wish to die and leave Narnia with as many loyal allies, strong defenses, efficient means of transportation and education, _heirs_, and as few enemies as possible. What if we die in battle, and the country was left unprepared for defense? Should Aslan's country disintegrate just because one of her rulers decided she wished to have more parties instead of more soldiers?"

Lucy pouted. "There's more to being a king than just politics and defense."

"You're right, Lu," Susan said gently. "Peter and Ed are just being boys. We must provide economically and socially for our subjects, too!"

"Right!"

"I think I understand now why Aslan had us all take the throne together," Edmund said, his face breaking into an easy grin. "What Peter and I lack in sympathy and common sense, you and Lu make up for. And vice versa."

A warm, sultry breeze blew in from the south, and the children saw it ripple across a nearby field of barley before it brushed their faces and teased their damp hair. They all sighed and laid back down in the warm grass, and Lucy said, "Oh, let's stop talking about being kings and queens for just a while. Right now, we are just Narnians."

The four of them basked in such a warm thought for a long time, drinking in the cornflower blue sky and listening to the birds chatter in the trees over the pond. Peter listened and looked and relished until he felt his eyelids droop, but just as he was about to drift off into sleep, Edmund sat up and said slowly, eyes wide,

"What if we leave behind no heirs?"


End file.
